The first thing most of us do when we get a new camera is dive into the menus and select the various settings that work best for our style of shooting. This is an important task, because when chosen carefully these settings can make photography easier, but improper settings can really hold you back.

Yes, we’re posting our annual favorite cameras and lenses awards of 2018 with only a day left in January 2019, but that just means determining the best photo gear for last year was harder than usual. And it was, especially with the raft of exciting new full frame mirrorless cameras that hit the market in the second half of last year.

This will probably surprise you, but for someone writing about the advantages of heading out with one camera and one lens, I mostly don't do that. As a professional photographer who emphasizes travel images and loves to apply special techniques, I most often carry a rather full kit of lenses and a back-up DSLR, plus filters and a tripod.

Street photography—walking around with a camera, poised to capture life on the fly—has never been more popular than it is now. Back in the day, masters like Alfred Eisenstaedt and Henri Cartier-Bresson prowled the streets with classic film-based Leica rangefinders, but today most street shooters opt for modern digital cameras.

The Nikon D500 is nearly three years old now and this APS-C sensor (aka crop sensor) based DSLR has been eclipsed by many other cameras, including several mirrorless models, in both features and price.

Canon is still the king but don’t look now, Sony is closing fast. That’s the message from the annual hot gear list from LensRentals, a top source for photographers looking to rent cameras, lenses, lighting gear and video equipment.

We have sung the praises of the Nikon Df on Shutterbug several times before so it’s nice to know we’re not the only ones still infatuated with this retro-styled DSLR from 2013. Photographer Mattias Burling who takes second looks at recent classic cameras on his excellent YouTube channel has put out a video titled “5 Reasons to Buy a Nikon DF in 2018 - As underrated as it gets.

If your eyes have glazed over by the countless videos out there comparing the latest smartphone cameras to real cameras, you’re not alone. The tipping point for photographer Evan Ranft was a video he saw comparing a Google Pixel smarthphone’s camera to a Hasselblad medium format camera.

As I confidently predicted last time, you can’t possibly please everybody when it comes to picking the best, the greatest, or the most influential cameras ever made. After we posted our list of The Top 20 Greatest Cameras of All Time, it came as no surprise that we received a ton of emails, varying in tone from pugnacious condemnation, to anguish, to polite suggestion, all begging to differ with our first top ten choices.